Rickhoff's extended vacation on the probate court

Bexar County Probate Court Judge Tom Rickhoff is taking 65 days off from work at the courthouse this year, according to a docket calendar kept by Rickhoff's staff.

Rickhoff's list of courthouse absences includes eight weeks of vacation time, 16 isolated days in which he has been out of the office, and various trips to professional conferences. It does not include county holidays.

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By comparison, the county's other probate-court judge, Polly Jackson Spencer, is scheduled to take only 12 days off this year.

Rickhoff, 70, seemed taken aback when confronted with his absent days, asking, “Was it that many?”

Both Rickhoff and Spencer receive a taxpayer-funded salary of $161,492. The county does not impose a cap on how much vacation time judges can take in a year.

Sources say Rickhoff's schedule is a reflection of the extremely casual approach that he has brought to his job since taking the probate-court bench in 2001. They say Rickhoff seems to view probate court as an easy way to receive a county salary while also collecting a state pension for his stint on the Texas 4th Court of Appeals.

Rickhoff's extended absences tend to put extra strain on Spencer and occasionally require the county to bring in visiting judges, who are paid on a per-diem basis.

Rickhoff's 2014 schedule includes a six-week vacation to Australia and New Zealand that begins in November and runs to the end of the year. It comes at a time when Spencer is completing her 24-year-stint on the probate court.

Spencer declined to comment on Rickhoff's schedule.

If Rickhoff's late-year vacation seems excessive — and inconsiderate to the judge who presides over his sister court — it is not altogether surprising to those who have followed his 13 years on the probate-court bench.

In 2006, Rickhoff waited until one week after surviving a tough re-election challenge from Democratic nominee Barbara Scharf-Zeldes to send Spencer a letter informing her that he no longer wanted to handle the mental-health docket, which he had been splitting with Spencer.

“In an effort to reduce angst and conflict in my life,” Rickhoff wrote, “I need to step aside from the mental-health docket now.”

As a result of Rickhoff's action, the county was forced to appoint an associate judge, Oscar Kazen, to help Spencer with the mental-health docket.

Last December, when Spencer's disabled daughter was hospitalized, Spencer could not take time off because Rickhoff decided to take several vacation days during that same period, according to sources and docket records.

Rickhoff, the brother of Bexar County Clerk Gerard Rickhoff, made political history in his 1978 race for district clerk, becoming the first local Republican to win a countywide race.

I visited Rickhoff at his office Thursday afternoon to talk about his work schedule. Dressed in an all-black Western outfit, with a bolo tie and cowboy boots, the judge sat at his desk with autographed pictures of former presidents Richard Nixon and George H.W. Bush resting on a shelf behind him.

When asked to explain his absences, Rickhoff paused and talked about how he used to arrive for work every day at 7 a.m. back when he was an appeals-court judge and his sons were competing on the Central Catholic High School swim team.

“I never took vacations then,” Rickhoff said. “So now I have a moment where I can get away for the holidays, so I'm going to do that.”

Rickhoff did not mention that he took nearly five consecutive weeks of vacation time in the summer of 2013.

Rickhoff was exceedingly cordial during my visit and seemed to go out of his way to inform people that I was looking into his vacation schedule.

When the judge received a phone call from former Republican state Sen. (and current Justice of the Peace) Jeff Wentworth, Rickhoff said, “Jeff, I'm sitting here with Gilbert Garcia, and he's doing a story on how much time I've missed.”

A few minutes later, Rickhoff made a similar announcement to someone I passed on my way out of the office. As I walked out the door, the judge offered this farewell: “I think I'm not going to worry too much about this (column). I'm going to take the birdcage view.”

Soon enough, Rickhoff will enjoy six weeks of scenic views Down Under.